The present invention relates to a sheet convey apparatus for conveying a mixture of obverse- and reverse-presented sheets set at an inlet port to a collecting device.
A bill sorter/stacker has been developed as a sheet collecting apparatus wherein sheets such as bills or bank notes including various denominations are at once inspected and sorted/counted in accordance with the inspection results.
In the bill sorter/stacker of this type, first denomination bills (e.g. 100-dollar or 20-pound notes), second denomination bills (e.g. 50-dollar or 10-pound notes), third denomination bills (e.g. 10-dollar or 5-pound notes) and fourth denomination bills (e.g. 5-dollar or 1-pound notes) are sorted and stacked in four collecting chambers, respectively. When the bills of one batch have been sorted and stacked, the dispensing ports of the collecting chambers are opened, and the bills of each denomination are stacked in the respective bill compartments. Thereafter, bills of a next batch are subject to sorting and collecting.
However, in the conventional bill sorter/stacker of the type described above, there are four collecting chambers and among them two collecting chambers for obverse-presented bills and two other collecting chambers for reverse-presented bills are prepared to collect obverse- and reverse-presented bills of four denominations. Specifically, bills of the first denomination are collected in the first set of collecting chambers for obverse- and reverse-presented bills, and bills of the second denomination are collected in the second set of collecting chambers for obverse- and reverse-presented bills. Thereafter, bills of the third denomination are collected in either the first or second set of collecting chambers, and bills of the fourth denomination are collected in the other of the two sets of collecting chambers. Thus, only bills of two denominations can be sorted at one time; and, when bills of four denominations must be collected, double sorting/collecting time is required, resulting in inconvenience.
Due to the above problem, there is a current demand for a system which can automatically align the sides of the bills on the convey path which leads to the sorting/collecting section, and can collect obverse or reverse-presented bills of four denominations at once.